


Consider The Wildflowers

by AvocadoLove



Series: Consider Chaos [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Avatar Zuko (Avatar), Gen, Sort Of, The Dark Spirit (Avatar), Unreliable Narrator, Unreliable Narrator who is also an angry rug, Zuko (Avatar)-centric, Zuko is an Awkward Turtleduck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:02:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22050730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AvocadoLove/pseuds/AvocadoLove
Summary: AU during the Siege of the North.When the moon was briefly killed, the lines between the spirit world and the material world grew thin. It became possible for someone to cross the barrier.Or,Zuko meets the ally he never knew he needed, in the form of a dark angry rug.
Series: Consider Chaos [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1853452
Comments: 173
Kudos: 3806
Collections: Behold the Sacred Texts, Finished111, Good_or_Decent_Zuko_With_a_dash_of_Iroh_Azula_Gaang, The Best of Zuko, The Witch's Woods, avatar tingz





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So basically, Muffin Lance has been world-building an AU out of a fabulous concept on her Tumblr: What if Zuko was the Chaos Avatar/Dark Avatar with Vaatu possessing him?
> 
> She's going in amazing directions with it (seriously, check out her Tumblr) and one plot bunny started chewing on my brain. I elbowed my way in and asked if I could do a ficlit based on that prompt. She was nice enough to let me. :)
> 
> For those who ARE following the threads, I went a different direction than she seems to be taking.

“Back for a rematch?” Zuko sneered, tossing the bound Avatar aside. He fell into a snowbank with a yelp.

“Trust me, Zuko.” The Water Tribe girl slid into a stance. “It’s not going to be much of a match.”

Zuko forced himself to push away the clinging exhaustion, the dread which always came from knowing he was outnumbered–not the first time, and not the last– and squared himself for a duel. If he could defeat this girl again and retake the Avatar, that only left the idiot Water Tribe boy and the ten-ton bison. If the white-haired girl was any type of princess, she could defend herself, too. Well, Zuko would find a way to deal with her last.

Winning his honor back was never meant to be easy.

Zuko struck. His blast of flame was hampered by the frozen night air. The girl batted it away easily with a spray of water. Then the ice rose under Zuko’s feet, encasing him up to his neck before slamming him back down. His head hit hard-packed snow, and it was over.

The world swam in and out of focus. He heard conversations that sounded as if they were happening right over his head and far, far away at the same time.

“What are you doing, Aang?”

“We can’t just leave him here.”

“Sure we can. Let’s go.”

Someone grabbed under Zuko's arm and hauled him up.

Zuko had enough presence of mind to snarl and jerk his arm back. He fell out of the grip and down to his knees. He groaned, holding his head as the world made dizzying loops around him.

“Zuko, we’re trying to help,” said a young voice. The Avatar.

Help? How? By dragging him back to a city under siege? "I won’t be a war prisoner!“ he yelled, or maybe tried to yell. Those words, too, were very far away, and some got mashed around in his mouth as if his tongue were a step behind.

The grip fell on him again, but he had enough presence of mind to lurch away from… Was that the Avatar? The Avatar was trying to… capture him?

The world stabilized enough to see the idiot Water Tribe boy nearby, holding onto a length of Zuko’s best rope in a way that showed he meant to tie Zuko up with it. That was not going to happen.

Zuko breathed a plume of fire, succeeding in getting both to back off. Somehow, he made it back to his feet.

"Zuko, please,” the Avatar said, painfully earnest. As if _he_ wasn’t being the unreasonable one. “I have to go help the spirits of the ocean and moon, but I can’t just leave you here.”

“Yes, we can,” the Water Tribe boy said. “Look at him. He’s fine.”

Zuko swayed slightly on his feet, but he was standing. And if he was standing, he could fight. Not that it would do him any good, he realized with bitter disappointment. He wasn’t just outmatched. There was no way he could grab the Avatar now. Even if he could find a way to overpower him, he couldn’t get him away from the others. Not like this.

Frustrated, the Avatar turned to the waterbender. “Katara?”

Their eyes met and Zuko saw cold practicality in her gaze. “We’ll come back and collect him after the battle is over.”

That wasn’t good enough for the Avatar. They started squabbling. Zuko decided enough was enough. Turning, he staggered away.

The little monk called his name again, his voice ripped away in the last of the storm winds.

Zuko fell into a heavy run, one hand pressed to his still sore ribs, the other to his aching head. Slowly, the world slid back into full focus. At last, he stopped, breathing hard, shook his head to clear out the last of the fuzziness, and looked around.

The full moon cast light almost as bright as day. He was in the middle of a field of bleak white-blue ice. Featureless and never-ending. Above, in the pitch-black sky stars glittered as cold and clear as diamonds. The freak blizzard had abated, and with the landscape exposed to the chill air, he could practically feel the temperatures plummeting.

His breath of fire would keep him warm for a time, but it ate calories, and he was exhausted and injured. Worse, he had failed his mission yet _again_. He had the Avatar within his grasp… and had let him slip through his fingers.

“I’m not going to give up,” he said and turned to walk slowly back in the direction he thought– _guessed_ –was the Northern Water Tribe city.

There was no sign of the Avatar’s bison. They had left him behind.

But as long as Zuko had breath in his body, he had a chance. Everything was on the line. His honor, his throne… his father’s love…

Zuko walked, trying to use his breath of fire sparingly and ignoring the fact that it seemed less warming every time that he did.

A calm part of him knew there was a very good chance he would not last until the next night. The arctic days were just as cold as the nights at this latitude and he shivered even under his superior Fire Nation jacket.

He was in deep, deep trouble.

 _I’m a failure_ , he thought. _I’ve failed every single chance I’ve had. I’m a bad son._

A tiny part of him, so faint it was not there at all, whispered that this wasn’t his fault. This mission had been impossible from the beginning. But that rebellious flame was growing colder, squashed down by despair. By three long years of searching and failing.

Suddenly, Zuko’s next step fell not upon ice and hard packed snow, but solid rock.

He stumbled to his knees and skinned his palms on dry, brown stone.

“What?” His next inhale of air was warm. He looked up to see himself in a place completely transported.

The snowfields were gone. He was now on the edge of a rocky crater.

And the full moon above was bathed in blood.

Tearing his eyes from the unsettling sight, he looked around. The landscape was barren, aside from two points of glowing blue light: one standing to the north, the other to the south. They seemed to be encased within thick domes as if shielded from the rest of the world around them.

A dead, gnarled tree stood in the middle.

Everything about this world made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. It was not natural. Again, his eyes were pulled upward to the red moon.

Uncle’s stories came back to him. A blood moon spoke of warnings and dire shifts from within the spirit world.

With dawning horror, Zuko realized he was not within the human world any longer. This was the spirit world. Or, at least, a part of it. But... People shouldn’t just be able to stumble into the spirit world. The barriers were supposed to be strong… unless, something happened to shift the balance.

“What have you done, Avatar?” he muttered, knowing it was hypocritical. But the Avatar was supposed to keep things like this from happening. What good was he?

Suddenly, the moon itself disappeared from the sky like a snuffed flame. Zuko was thrown into semi-darkness. The only lights came from the Northern and Southern lit domes.

As it did, a scream split the air. Zuko felt it ringing like a chime within his own soul. A howl of agony, frustration, impotent rage and betrayal…

… And it came from the tree.

 _Someone is trapped in there!_ he thought. _He needs help!_

“Hold on!” he yelled, running toward it. Later, he wasn’t sure why, or how he could be so sure, only that there was no doubt. “I’m coming!”

The scream went on and on, sheering into him.

Skidding to a stop in front of the tree, Zuko did what he always did in the face of an obstacle: blast through it.

He punched bolts of flame as hot as he could make it against the trunk. The bark began to peel and char.

“Hold on!” Zuko yelled again. Gritting his teeth, he focused on his breathing to keep up a steady jet of flame. He was getting through.

Then, suddenly, true light flooded the landscape again. Zuko looked up to see that the moon had returned back to the sky, new and brilliant. As soon as the milky light touched the bark of the tree, it hardened. Suddenly, his fire was as ineffective as splashing light against a stone. Worse, it seemed to be going out...

Panting, Zuko stepped back.

The trunk was blacked and burned. He had managed only a thin crack in the bark, just wide enough to fit the tips of his fingers.

He stepped back, breathing hard and wiping sweat from his eyes. The screaming had stopped. Maybe whoever was in there was dead.

“I failed again,” he said.

“Not yet,” replied a deep voice from deep, deep within the trunk.

Then a thin, dark ribbon shot out of the crack and wrapped itself around his waist.

Zuko yelped and shot fire, or tried, but nothing sparked from his hands. Then he was jerked forward, reeled to the tree, sucking him into the darkness within.

He hit the trunk hard, and braced both hands against it, pushing back to break free. The dark ribbon held him fast and pulled him forward as if meaning to yank him inside.

It hurt. The crack in the bark was too thin, he couldn’t fit. He’d be shredded to a pulp…

Then, with a twist he felt both inside and out, he was pulled _through_ and _in_.


	2. Chapter 2

  
The ribbon fell away, and Zuko found himself inside a dark space. Moonlight streamed in through the crack in the bark he had made, and through it, he saw a thin strip of the rocky wasteland outside.

He stood inside the trunk of the spirit tree, and he was not alone. Something moved in the inky darkness beyond.

“Stay back!” Zuko barked and threw a bolt of fire down, or tried to. His chi moved, but there was no flash of warmth in his veins. No fire came.

A dark chuckle rolled out of the blackness. “You can’t escape, little human. The balance has been restored, and your firebending will no longer work inside the spirit world. You are as trapped as I am.”

“What… What do you mean?“ He squinted, making out the vague outline of… something triangular? "Who are you?”

“My name,” said the dark voice, “is Vaatu.”

There was a pause. Zuko pressed his back against the rough bark, wishing he had his swords with him. “Are you a spirit?”

Wrong answer. The darkness in front of him seemed to swell in indignation. “Am I a spirit?!” it roared. “I am one of the Great Spirits. How could you not—Raava,” it spat, like a curse. “She has struck me from human memory. Or perhaps you are just uneducated.”

Despite everything, the raging spirit and the oddness of the situation, Zuko straightened his spine. “I’m _hardly_ uneducated. My name is Zuko, son of Ursa and Fire Lord Ozai. Prince of the Fire Nation.”

“The Fire Nation,” Vaatu repeated in disgust.

Zuko clenched his fists. “You have a problem with the Fire Nation?”

There was a sound as if heavy fabric was being dragged over stone. Zuko had the impression the spirit was pacing back and forth.

His eyes had adjusted to the darkness enough to make out the general shape of Vaatu. It—he?—stood larger than Zuko, but bowled as if it couldn’t fully stand up straight. It had a triangular head and no mouth he could see. It had a glow about itself… Zuko never thought that black could glow, but there was something vaguely luminescent about it. Purples, reds, and deep blues that seemed, somehow, darker than the inky blackness.

“Only that human beings let Raava separate you by the elements,” Vaatu said. “Tell me, do you worship or her? Do you thank her for bringing order and peace to your pathetic lives?”

Zuko knew he was being mocked, but he wasn’t quite sure how or why. “I don’t know who Raava is.”

“Indeed?” The pacing stopped. “I’ve heard she calls her human vessel ‘The Avatar’.”

“I don’t worship the Avatar,” Zuko snapped. “I’m trying to capture him!” And, because he had spent the last almost three years learning everything he could about Avatars in preparation for his quest, he added, “And what do you mean by ‘vessel’? The Avatar is the spirit of the world.”

“Lies,” Vaatu hissed. “The Avatar is merely a human vessel for my partner, Raava. We are half of the same. I am the dark to her light, the push to her pull, the freedom to her order. Raava and Vaatu had been in the same dance since the beginning of time, thousands upon of thousands of years… Until she changed the rules. During the last harmonic convergence, she sought the aid of a human, and merged with him, becoming more powerful than I could ever imagine. Then, she shut me away in here so she could remake the world into her image.”

“This is the tree of time,” Zuko realized. Vaatu’s had words lit a tiny spark of memory, a children’s story told in his mother’s voice. He didn’t think it had been an approved Fire Nation history. Just an old folktale. Not important... until now.

Zuko edged back again, his back pressing against the wall. “You are the evil trapped in the tree of time.”

What had he done?

“More lies,” Vaatu hissed. "I am not evil. I am the other side of light.”

Which sounded pretty evil to Zuko. He tried to swallow through a suddenly dry throat. “The Avatar– The first Avatar… One? _Wan_. Wanted peace. He was a firebender. The first real firebender.”

“What is peace to the downtrodden?” Vaatu sneered.

“What? I don’t—“

“Has the world been at peace these last ten-thousand years?” Vaatu mocked. “How has Raava’s world worked for you? One people separated into four depending on their elements. Do you all get along?”

The answer to that was written over half of Zuko’s face. “The Avatar disappeared for a hundred years,” Zuko said. "He… he tried to stop the Fire Nation, then ran like a coward.”

“Then that is the fault of the human vessel," Vaatu paused, considering. "Or perhaps it was the human vessel’s strength.”

None of this made sense. Zuko’s head ached. This sounded like one of Uncle’s riddles, and he hated those. No matter what he answered, it was always wrong.

He turned away to glance at the world outside the crack.

“You do not understand,” Vaatu said.

“I don’t care,” Zuko replied. “I need to find a way out of here.”

He needed to capture the Avatar. Raava. Whatever, whoever he was. He needed to reclaim his destiny.

Vaatu was silent for a moment. Then he spoke. “Consider the wildflowers.”

Zuko scowled. This was definitely drifting into the territory of Uncle’s obscure metaphors, flowers and all. He turned back to Vaatu. “I don’t want to talk about stupid wildflowers—“

A black ribbon shut out, quick as a snake, twisting around his neck, not tight enough to cut off his breath, but the threat was there. Zuko scrabbled, but as before, the spirit ribbon was too strong, he couldn’t claw it away.

The end of the ribbon reached up and covered Zuko’s eyes, tight as a blindfold.

“Consider the wildflowers,” Vaatu said again, with forced patience.

And suddenly, in the darkness, Zuko saw a vision of a wild-grown field, in the height of summer. A riot of colors, in every shade and variety he could image and quite a few he couldn’t name. Each plant pushed its way toward the sun, all straining towards the sky. And Zuko saw the roots tangling below in the rich soil, the bugs crawling below and between, among the stems and over the petals, pollinating on accident and on purpose. Fighting for the territory, finding mates, laying eggs. He saw the animals, small and large, that both fed on and depended on the plant life around it. All among the plants that both poisoned and nurtured them all.

He saw this all at once, in the same moment and in the future and in the past, through each season, each day, each _second_. It was beautiful and terrible, and his mind spun trying to take it all in. It was too much. So much movement, drama, life in a small area. Not all of it was happy: There was death there, too, but death gave way to life, which fought and crawled and grew and died again and was reborn…

“Yes…” Vaatu said, in his mind as the flowers grew, seeded, died, regrew again. “So you see the chaotic bounty of life…”

“Stop…” Zuko choked out. He was looking at perhaps a small part of one meadow in a random part of the world, but was perceiving all of it at one time, from the deepest root to the sky and he couldn’t… he couldn’t… his brain was going to explode…

The vision faded to velvety blackness. Zuko bent, drawing in ragged breaths. His eyes streamed tears under the blindfold and he wasn’t sure why.

The ribbon had not released him. He knew more was coming.

“This is what I am,” Vaatu said. “Clashing, fighting straining, living. You are a being of fire. You know the passion for life is what makes existence worth enduring. This is what I want.”

Zuko let out a breath. “What,” he asked, dreading the question, “Does Raava want?”

Then, in Zuko’s mind’s eye, he was not looking at a field. He as looking at cultivated fire tulips planted in perfect rows. Each beautiful and well grown, each turned towards the sun in uniformity. There was no trace of disease, no strife. Even the roots had been conditioned to grow into perfect harmony with its neighbors.

“Raava sees beauty in the order,“ Vaatu said. "In the perfection of plants given exactly what they need to thrive, not too much, not too little. Of the bees that pollinate them, existing under one queen in perfect harmony. The ants underground that think with one mind.”

The cultivated field of tulips was beautiful, too. It was also stark and painfully sterile.

“This is what Raava wishes to turn our world into. First: Four nations perfectly in balance, each with its own leader and separate philosophy. No clashing, no strife. Only peace. Then... then only one people.”

The perfect rows of red of fire tulips rows went on and on, the same forever and ever, until Zuko was dizzy with it, until the red looked like spilled blood on the ground…

He realized it was blood after all. Blood which marched through the veins of a people… a people so alike that Zuko could not tell one from another. They all the same skin tone, the same look in their blank eyes, the same features, with the exact same opinions, lived in the same type of dwelling and there was no jealousy or envy between them, fighting at all because they were all the same and lacked for nothing.

They weren’t people at all. They were ants. Worse than ants because even ant colonies grew and declined and made war against against each other. These people simply… existed.

“Stop…” he gasped again.

The vision faded and the ribbon fell from his eyes and unwound from his neck.

Zuko fell to his knees, holding his head in his hands.

“That’s the world the Avatar wants?” he croaked.

"Raava calls submission peace. She would have no disagreements, no dissent, no passion. Her vessel?” Vaatu paused and then admitted, “I suspect not. The only reason Raava has not yet made the world a soulless barren place is because of her human vessel, for I live in the hearts of all human beings. Raava calls it war. I call it freedom.”

Zuko stood up. “Then help me capture the Avatar. Lock him—lock her in here like she has done to you.”

“You little fool,” Vaatu snarled. “Haven’t you been listening? We are two halves of the same whole. Chaos means nothing without peace! This is something that Raava has never understood. She would try to end the war. I know that war is existence.”

Zuko shut his eyes. This was why he hated riddles. He always got the answers to them wrong.

“It doesn’t matter,” Zuko said. “I can't do anything if I’m stuck in here.” 

He turned towards the crack in the bark, the strip of light which was all he could see of the world.

“True,” Vaatu admitted. “At least until harmonic convergence comes. Then, all will be equal again. I, at least, will have a chance to be free.”

“When is that?”

“Only one human lifetime away.”

“I can’t stay in here for that long!”

“Oh, I suspect you’ll die of dehydration within two days, Prince Zuko. Your next incarnation may see it, though. Not that you will remember.”

“That’s not funny.”

He turned towards the crack again. A spark of an idea, born from the same tiny, rebellious voice that screamed, ” _No!_ ” whenever his father said he was too stupid, a failure… lucky to be born

“You said that Raava grew stronger when she joined with a human. If you…” Zuko took a breath. “If you joined with me, could we get out of here? Together?”

The spirit laughed. “I? Vaatu, bind myself to a mortal? A being of freedom, submit and give up and merge with another?”

“It’s not giving up, it’s changing with the times. Raava beat you ten thousand years ago. Do you want to stay in here another ten-thousand?” he said. “What if she uses the next harmonic convergence to remake the world into... into _that place_." Like the stark, sterile tulip fields.

Vaatu went silent for a long moment. Then, “You don’t know what you ask.”

“I know that if I don’t get out of here, I’m going to starve to death,” Zuko snapped. “I’m not afraid to die, but I will not spend my last days listening to you monologue about chaos and freedom.” He stepped forward. “I’m not ready to give up. I’ll do whatever it takes to get out of here and win back my honor.”

“Honor,” Vaatu snorted. “You carry the heart of Raava within you, too.”

"I do?" How could Honor be a bad thing?

"Human beings have both chaos and order within their hearts," Vaatu said.

Zuko sensed that was important, but not particularly relevant. He stood in place, arms crossed. Waiting.

Finally, Vaatu spoke. “I would be with you not just for the remainder of this life. Raava merged with Wan and she has stayed with him throughout all in his many incarnations.”

That gave Zuko pause, but not for long. This was his only shot at getting free, and Vaatu… well, it would be up to his future life to deal with him.

“Fine. Whatever.” Zuko grit his teeth. “Do it.”

With the sound of cloth over stone, Vaatu stepped forward into the shaft of moonlight. Zuko laid eyes on him for the first time, a pattern both familiar and strange, like a mendola rug with the head of a flatworm, but beautiful in an alien way. It was not a creature. It was, somehow, a force of nature.

For the third time, Vaatu’s ribbons shot out and wrapped around his limbs. Zuko forced himself not to fight or look away as Vaatu pulled himself in.

It was like standing in the beating heart of a flame, love, passion, rage, joy, hate… it was the passion of the fire, the strength of the earth, the chaos of water and the freedom of air.

Zuko screamed and felt Vaatu screaming with him. He burned and froze at the same time, and as they became one the energy of it shattered the prison around them.

Suddenly, Zuko found himself laying again on the snowing ice fields in the moral world.

The weak northern sun had risen. Agni’s light fed strength into his bones. He stood, and coughed out flame that warmed his blood from the inside out.

He felt… different, but he wasn’t exactly sure how yet. More like himself, and also less at the same time.

“What now?” he asked mostly to himself and was surprised when he got an answer from deep within his heart.

_Now we become a true rival to Raava._

“What do you mean?”

He heard Vaatu’s dark chuckle. _I speak of the being you call an Avatar… Now there are two in the mortal world._

Horror and surprise warred through him. Zuko’s first thought, naturally, was what his what his father would think… Would he love Zuko at last, now he had the strength of an Avatar?

But somehow, his father’s opinion wasn’t quite as important as it was before.

After all, he had bowed low to his father, gave up his challenge during the Agni Kai and begged for forgiveness… and just look what that had gotten him.

 _Now we will attempt to undo some of the damage Raava has brought to the world, and she will undo what she sees is our chaos in her quest for order. The never-ending battle will begin anew,_ Vaatu said with the deepest satisfaction. _As it has always been. As it should be._

Then Zuko’s stomach sank. “If I'm supposed to be an Avatar," Which was a concept so strange he could hardly say it. "After fire, the next element is air. And the airbenders are… gone.”

 _Of course they are_ , Vaatu said. Four separate peoples represent too much of a disorder for Raava. _We will fix that too, in time, but no matter. What you call this 'Avatar cycle' is merely Raava’s cycle._

“We are her opposite,” Zuko realized.

_Yes, Vessel. Your next step is not Air. It is Earth._

“Then I’ll have to find an Earthbending master.”

Now that the sun was up, he had a direction in mind. The city was north, but the direct coast also cut to the east. If he could get to the coast, he could make his way to the south and, eventually, the Earth Kingdom.

Since the day of his banishment, Zuko thought his destiny was to capture the Avatar.

Now he had a new destiny: To frustrate him. To _stop_ him.

Zuko started walking.

The end.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Chaos Avatar Zuko: It Begins](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28604166) by [crazyjc](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crazyjc/pseuds/crazyjc)




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